{"id":204594,"date":"2026-03-24T22:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/204594\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T22:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:43:11","slug":"ron-desantis-says-sean-hannity-helped-mend-2018-tiff-between-donald-trump-top-florida-republicans-over-hurricane-maria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/204594\/","title":{"rendered":"Ron DeSantis says Sean Hannity helped mend 2018 tiff between Donald Trump, top Florida Republicans over Hurricane Maria"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you liked the results of the 2018 elections, you can credit a Fox News host, says the Florida Governor.<\/p>\n

Both\u00a0Ron DeSantis<\/a> and\u00a0Rick Scott<\/a> benefited from President\u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s support in 2018, including at the end of the race.<\/p>\n

But DeSantis, a Congressman at the time running to replace Scott as Governor, reveals that Trump wasn\u2019t happy with either him or the future Senator after the candidates distanced themselves in the wake of comments after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

And it took\u00a0Sean Hannity to bring the band back together.<\/p>\n

During comments on \u201cHang out with Sean Hannity<\/a>,\u201d DeSantis said Trump\u2019s comments that upset some from, and on, the island represented a political liability given an influx of people into Florida ahead of that election.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou had the whole Puerto Rico thing. So remember, they had Hurricane Maria. And so Puerto Rico is not a state, but these are American citizens. So you had a lot of them pouring into Central Florida. And so the Puerto Rican population increased dramatically. So obviously, you know, our state at the time was a 1-point state. A lot of people said, because of that, a Republican wasn\u2019t going to win in 2018. And that was that,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n

Among other things, Trump said the storm wasn\u2019t a \u201creal catastrophe like Katrina<\/a>\u201d and said that 2,975 people didn\u2019t die<\/a> in the wake of the storm, a claim that put the candidates on the defensive.<\/p>\n

At the time, Scott tweeted<\/a> that he disagreed with Trump on the death toll. A DeSantis spokesman said the candidate \u201cdoesn\u2019t believe any loss of life has been inflated.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeSantis said Trump liked to throw \u201cbroadsides\u201d at Puerto Rican politicians. DeSantis described how he and Scott, who have not communicated in more than seven years since DeSantis was sworn in as Governor, tried to ameliorate the situation.<\/p>\n

DeSantis recalled that things \u201cmay be a little sensitive in Central Florida with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSo Rick and I were trying to just massage it a little bit and maybe just try to put a little sugar on that. And the President, you know, got upset about it,\u201d DeSantis said, crediting Hannity with telling Trump to \u201cget on the team together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hannity had a \u201cbig knockdown, drag-out fight\u201d with Trump urging him to \u201csupport\u201d the candidates, who were both in competitive races. Eventually, Trump relented and did a couple of rallies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you liked the results of the 2018 elections, you can credit a Fox News host, says the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[409,28,30,29,93998,93999,94000,3856,412,23646],"class_list":["post-204594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-donald-trump","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-hang-out-with-sean-hannity","tag-hurricane-katrina","tag-hurricane-maria","tag-rick-scott","tag-ron-desantis","tag-sean-hannity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}